This is for every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality, and refuses to accept assessments, tests and evaluations imposed by those who have contempt for real teaching and learning.

The very idea that we need the same academic standards in public
schools from coast-to-coast is unpopular, expensive, ineffective and
politically suicidal.

The Wall Street Journal reports
at least $7 billion taxpayer dollars have been wasted implementing this
plan, and it would cost significantly more to finish the job.

“Five years into the biggest transformation of U.S.
public education in recent history, Common Core is far from common.
Though 45 states initially adopted the shared academic standards in
English and math, seven have since repealed or amended them. Among the
remaining 38, big disparities remain in what and how students are
taught, the materials and technology they use, the preparation of
teachers and the tests they are given. A dozen more states are
considering revising or abandoning Common Core.”

Meanwhile public support drops precipitously with each passing year.
Less than half of all Americans – 49% – and only 40% of teachers now
favor the policy. That’s a drop of 16% among the general population
since 2013. But even more surprising is the plummeting backing from
teachers. Advocacy has dropped 36 points
from two years ago when three quarters of educators approved of the
change. This is especially damning because of all social groups,
teachers know the Core the best.

In political circles lawmakers who used to champion these standards
now take pains to distance themselves from them. Politicians as diverse
as Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton now claim they either never supported the policy in the first place or that it’s a good idea that has been badly implemented. Support among Republicans – who initially favored the plan much more than Democrats – has practically vanished.
The writing is on the wall. Common Core is sinking fast.

Yet there remains a minority of real live educators who will
cheerfully direct you away from the lifeboats even as the ship of our
public schools lists dangerously to port. Despite everything going on
around them, they cling to this disastrous policy blunder despite the
harshest criticisms.

It’s strange.

By and large, Common Core wasn’t created by teachers. It was forced
on us by policymakers, functionaries and corporations. It usurps our
autonomy. It overrides our judgment. And it ties us to practices that
almost all of us think are detrimental to our students. But some of us
still think it’s the bees knees.

The only explanation I can come up with is Stockholm syndrome.
The phenomena, also called capture-bonding, occurs when hostages
empathize with their captors. Kidnapping victims sometimes feel sorry
for the very people who abducted them. Something similar seems to be
happening with the few hardcore supporters of Common Core that are left.

For instance, regardless of the public relations efforts being spewed by corporate America, Common Core was not created by teachers. It’s shocking that this fact is still disputed. It is easily verifiable.

Here it is from the National Governors Association – these 24 people wrote the first draft of the standards. And these 101 people revised
them. None of these people were currently employed as a K-12 classroom
teacher. Moreover, very few of them even had K-12 classroom experience
at some distant point in their careers. Even less had experience at the
middle school or elementary level. Less than that had experience in
special education or with English Language Learners.

Therefore saying Common Core was created by teachers is incredibly
disingenuous. It’s like taking a single speck from a beef bullion cube
and calling it a filet mignon. Something resembling a cow may have been
present at one point, but add water and you couldn’t exactly call the
flavor beefy.

Yet there remain a small cadre of real life K-12 teachers who still champion this product. Think about what that means.

They prefer a prepackaged set of academic standards to what they would come up with on their own or with their colleagues. They prefer to give up their own professional judgment based on years of experience,
degree certifications and professional development in favor of
something handed down to them from the testing corporations and policy
wonks. They would rather be told what to do by people with far less
experience than to make their own decisions about how to do their own
jobs.

Even if everything in the Core was hunky dory, I’d have a problem
with that. Call it self-respect. Call it professional pride. I did not
get into this field to become anyone’s worker drone. Being a teacher is
not on par with being a greeter at Walmart. We need to make complex
decisions about how best to educate children every moment of every day.
That’s not a mcjob.

This doesn’t mean all the standards contained in the Core are
garbage. There are certainly some things in there that promote learning.
However, as educators have become more familiar with the contents, glaring mistakes have become apparent – standards that are age inappropriate, too specific, not specific enough, unduly restrictive, and just plain weird. If only there were some objective means of telling the wheat from the chaff.

But there is.

We could have tested the standards to see if they actually aided in comprehension. We could have field tested
the product – tried it out in a small scale and then assessed its
effectiveness. You would expect any new commodity to go through rigorous
research and development. Only a fool would just throw new merchandise
out there without any idea if it would work.

I have a major problem with that. As a teacher, I am appalled that I
am being forced to institute something so careless into my classroom. If
the legislature suddenly thought all children should be forced to pour
lemon juice on their heads before reading a book, I’d jolly well need a
good reason to do it before I started squeezing citrus on top of my
classes. But that’s kind of what they did, and they even charged the
taxpayers for all the lemons!

High stakes assessments do not promote learning. They narrow the curriculum and punish the neediest students for – in fact – being needy. It’s a proven fact:
rich children generally score well and poor children score badly. These
are terrible measurements of children’s academic success.

And most folks left on the dwindling bench of Common Core
cheerleaders agree! They don’t like testing either! Yet so many times
I’ve heard these people say, “I hate the testing but I love the Common
Core!”
What!? They’re intimately connected.

Common Core was designed to be assessed by standardized tests. In
fact, the standards attempt to make what is taught more representative
of what is tested. For instance, most passages on Reading assessments
are nonfiction. Therefore, Common Core says most of the reading done in school should be nonfiction. The tests emphasize cold reads. Therefore, the Core says teachers should make their students do more cold reads.

And yet Core advocates only find fault with the tests!? How can you
say ‘I don’t like the tests but I like teaching to the tests I don’t
like’?

Bizarrely, all this remains a mystery to the few Common Core
standard-bearers left in our classrooms. They want their Common Core.
Yes, it was forced on them by bureaucrats. Yes, it’s never been proven
to work.
Yes, it’s intimately connected to the same standardized testing
they hate. But they just can’t get enough of that Core.

Still, don’t be too hard on them. Everyday more of these folks are
waking up. Every day more of them discover they are living in The Matrix. Reality is not as it seemed.

Perhaps it will just take more time. Or a strict regime of psychoanalysis, mediation and special pharmaceuticals.

But one day the Common Core will breath its last, and we’ll need everyone to help undo the damage.